---
title: But they would not procure it unless they were threatened with death. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But they would not procure it unless they were threatened with death. Who acts: brothers. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/28/43/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28, sentence 43

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But they would not procure it unless they were threatened with death.

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**Who acts:** brothers · **What happens:** not procure, threaten · **To what, where:** dove, brothers

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brothers), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg5615:28:43
# text = But they would not procure it unless they were threatened with death.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	procure	procure	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	unless	unless	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	threatened	threaten	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	advcl	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **procure** | would | brothers *= brother* | dove |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **threaten** *a condition, not said to happen* | past · passive |  | brothers *= brother* |  |  |  | with death | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Experiencer |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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